Tote bags are extensively used by travelers and athletes. The design, construction and versatility of tote bags are especially well suited for use by participants in sporting affairs. The flexible, light-weight design and construction allows sporting participants to partially or completely fill the tote bag with attire, equipment and other sundry articles. Participants such as swimmers, tennis, soccer, football, baseball, basketball, players, etc. frequently use tote bags to carry their sporting attire to the sporting event. Upon completing the sporting activity, the participant may change into more appropriate street attire. Consequently, tote bags often serve as luggage carriers for sweat laden, soiled and dirty sporting attire which, in turn, leads to a generally unhealthful luggage environment.
Participants in sporting events will often expend excessive energy and water which needs to be replenished. Transportable coolers often serve as a common water or liquid refreshment source for sporting participants at many publicly or privately funded sporting functions. Most individual or unfunded sporting events, however, necessitate that the individual participant make available his or her own refreshment beverages. Toting a personal cooler is frequently impractical. It would be particularly advantageous if there existed a satisfactory tote bag which would serve both as a cooler and a luggage carrier.
The patent literature has not devoted its attention towards the creation and development of a tote bag which would effectively serve the dual purpose of a luggage carrier and a liquid refreshment cooler. U.S. Pat. No. 4,673,117 by J. D. Calton discloses a back-pack cooler which primarily serves as a beverage cooler. The Calton back-pack cooler is constructed of a rigid foam insulative core equipped with a rigid, tight fitting removable insulative lid for cooler access with the core being internally lined with a high density plastic, and jacketed on the outside with a cloth sheath. The Calton cooler primarily serves to back-pack beverages, but may also be equipped with a small uninsulated pouch section. Calton teaches that the cloth jacket and rigid insulative foam core combination are an essential embodiment of the back-pack cooler. The rigid insulative foam core disclosed by Calton consists of conventional foamed polystyrenes. Foamed polystyrenes are inherently fragile, and will readily fracture or break upon impact unless adequately protected. Fracturing or breaking of the insulative core does not appear to present a problem with the Calton back-pack cooler, especially since the back-packing positioning inherently protects the back-pack cooler from damage.
Unfortunately, the Calton back-pack technology is inapplicable to tote bag adaptation. Tote bags inherently encounter considerably more destructive abuses than a back-pack. Tote bags are often tossed or jarred against hard objects, biased into baggage carriers or lockers, stacked or piled, stowed in a partially or fully collapsed form, etc., all of which can readily fracture or break the fragile foamed polystyrene insulator. Such protective sheathing or coating of polystyrene foams to militate against foam breakage would not be suitable for tote bag adaptation only because of the excessive weight and bulk but also because such a rigid foam construction would also destroy the prerequisitial flexible and collapsible attributes of a tote bag.
In another patent (U.S. Pat. No. 4,429,793 by E. G. Ehmann), there is disclosed a pocket sized diabetic traveling case which is equipped to carry a refrigerated ampul of insulin. The pocket sized carrying case is similar to Calton by including an outer cover, an inner cover made of a water-resistant plastic and rigid thermal insulative material such as styrofoam (i.e. expanded cellular polystyrene) sandwiched between the external and inner covers.